


between two lungs

by 1once



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes is Darcy Lewis’s Father, Darcy Lewis centric, Darcy Lewis is Natasha Romanov’s Daughter, F/M, darcy is so badass omfg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-01 13:43:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18335483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1once/pseuds/1once
Summary: It’s truthful. It’s honest. That’s just one of her many rules that she broke today.





	between two lungs

**Author's Note:**

> everyone say thank u to florence + the machine for releasing her ‘lungs’ (2009) album

It isn’t unknown that Darcy Lewis and her taser are best friends. Almost every waking moment of Darcy’s life is spent cheekily adding in to conversations that she tazed the god of thunder once. Even Thor gave props to her, blushing while she beamed with pride. So yes, she is well acquainted with her taser, and it might not be as glamorous as an indestructible shield or an iron suit with a mind of its own, but it’s hers. It’s Darcy Lewis’ weapon of choice.

Of choice.

Which is why she is fuming when she doesn’t have her taser with her when the tower gets attacked on a beautiful morning on Saturday, after a full night of trying to get Jane at least some hours of sleep in the middle of her grand science revelation she gets every five minutes or so. 

The wall that is supposed to be bulletproof shatters when bullets whizz past her head. It hits the coffee pot in her hand and Darcy curses because the world couldn’t at least given her some coffee before it tries to murder her. In the middle of all of this however, she is glad that she left Jane in her lab because wherever she must be is probably so much more better than where Darcy is.

Once her chance with coffee is effectively eliminated, her instincts took over like a switch. She slides down the counter and listens to all the types of weapons, and she waits until the sounds of gunfire zones into one sound in her mind. Once she figures out what she’s up against, her mind wires into a plan. 

There is no way in any Nine Worlds or universe or whatever will she face heavy gunfire in her Hello Kitty pajamas. What she will do however, is look closely to the reflection of the shiny but destroyed refrigerator that she loved very dearly. There are lines of rope coming down from outside and down to her floor, and she already knows she has a limited number of seconds before they’re coming. She counts the pattern of their reloading (sloppy, really, because if they have that much guns, there shouldn’t even be a gap at all for reloading) and reaches for the extensive kitchen knife set just a few drawers right from her. For the umpteenth time, Tony Stark’s lavishness has saved a life.

The first person that slides down on the floor gets a paring knife thrown to an inch left of his heart. If she had another second to think, she would have shook her head at herself because wow she was rusty at knife throwing. However, she doesn’t have that luxury of time to think, and so she throws more knives. By her next throw, it’s a fatal strike every time. 

A bullet grazes her cheek and she makes herself slide down the counter to recollect herself. She’s outnumbered, and she’s running out of knives, and she left her taser on top of her bed thinking she would get coffee for a minute and burrow herself back into her blankets, completely safe and fine.

Darcy lives in the Avengers Tower. Of course she wouldn’t be safe and fine.

She blows a strand of hair out of her face and grips a chef’s knife. Darcy’s ears pick up footsteps coming towards her counter, and before they could reach her, she springs up from her position and attacks before he can check to where she was. Two quick jabs to his neck and ribs and he’s down, and she didn’t even use her knife. His body took some bullets for her as she quickly pocketed his handgun. She tries not to feel the sticky and warm blood oozing from his side, or more importantly, the natural and comfortable feeling of the gun’s weight in her hand.

Darcy peers to the fridge’s reflection again and she doesn’t need to look to know they’re retreating. These past few minutes, the rain of bullets have drastically lessened the more the enemy tried landing onto her floor. It comes to a complete stop when she doesn’t get up to throw knives, and that’s their biggest mistake. With an actual weapon in her hands now, she jumps on the counter and kicks the first one so hard that she hears a crack. 

In her mind, she fumes again. She’s fighting in her Hello Kitty pajamas.

There’s four of them spread out. Darcy reaches to them and they fall like dominos, one after another. Her last shot is to the head when someone at the corner tries firing at her. Her last throw was the chef’s knife to the first person who she had thrown the paring knife just left of his heart. He was still alive, but this time, it met its mark.

Before he chokes on his blood, she catches a word on his lips. 

“Pronađeno,” he says into his comm. _Found_. He spoke in Bosnian. Before she can reach for it, all the technology on the bodies start to smoke and self destruct. She clenches her jaw. Whoever it is, they’re playing with her. 

She sees a taser on the ground, and thinks _finally_. Her ears hear the steps on the stairs getting louder, and so she prepares herself by letting her finger rest on the trigger, aimed directly to the entrance of the stairs. Instead to kill, she’ll directly hear what they want. Her Bosnian isn’t that bad to listen too, either.

Darcy doesn’t hesitate when the first figure bursts through with speed. Then, her face cracks in shock when it’s Thor dropping to the floor.

She tazed the god of thunder twice.

“Holy shit!” she scrambles to Thor, watching as he twist on the ground. He stops in a few seconds, pulling the contraption from himself and scans Darcy for any signs of injury. “Thor, oh my god, I am so sorry!”

“‘Tis but a shock,” he grunts, smiling as he twitches. “Are you hurt?” he asks, already recovering in moments. Darcy shakes her head and helps him up by his arms. She’s guilty, but in a few hours she’s going to have a field day of laughter after realizing she tazed him again.

A minute after Thor came, the stairs were filled with running again, but this time, Darcy completely allowed Thor to keep watch. He pointed mjolnir at the entrance menacingly, his other arm protecting Darcy behind him. When the familiar red, white, and blue shield came into view, he put mjolnir down.

Steve, Sam, and Clint appeared, looking disgruntled but otherwise fine. She realized she was the only one in pajamas, and she looked at the ruined fridge that somehow still showed the time. It was almost 9 am. This scrimmage lasted a terrible 10 minutes.

“Is Jane fine?” Darcy knows Thor wouldn’t let any harm come to Jane, or else he wouldn’t have come up here if she were. But she needed to know. Something like fear always strikes her chest in situations like these. Darcy always knew she could defend herself; Jane was a different story. 

Thor nodded, face softening. “She was the one that mentioned you were up here, alone,” he looked around at her battlefield. She thinks she could see a proud smile small on his face. “But you got it all covered, Darcy.”

As he said that, the others also realized the scene. Bodies with knives aimed perfectly on the hearts. Bullets to the head. A gun in her hand. Darcy let it slip out of her hand before more could see it.

“You did this?” Clint asked, pointing to the knife sticking out of a guy’s chest. He sounded impressed.

“You know what they say,” Darcy said, her mind wiring quickly to think of what they say. “You pick things up from people you hang out with.”

Except, she didn’t pick it up from Clint. Or anyone. Her training, as far as they knew, was basic. During her first physical examination, they deemed her hopeful. Not exceptional, or even outstanding. She was hopeful, with skills to build on to the point maybe she can reach outstanding.

Darcy was beyond all of that. Her papa made sure of it.

The sound of Tony’s suit brings the attention away from her (thankfully), and Natasha rolls on to their floor from outside, which is by the way, one of the highest floors of the tower. That doesn’t phase anyone since Natasha is Natasha, but Darcy still feels herself geek out internally.

“I could never get a day off,” Tony says, the suit peeling off him by itself. He takes a seat on the couch after brushing off a few broken shards of glass. “JARVIS says the tower is completely safe, and no casualties of ours. Personally, I don’t think they were here to attack; just here to butter our bread. And boy, did they butter my bread.”

Despite how stupid that sounds, no one laughed. Tony sounded genuinely pissed.

“Whatever it is,” Steve starts, tone hard and serious. “We need to figure out who it is and why. I agree with Stark. This was an act of aggression. Suit up and reconvene at 0930.”

Nobody said anything and left accordingly to get ready for their meeting. Sam stayed behind to give her a bandaid before leaving, and for that she was beyond grateful. 

“You did great today,” he smiled, albeit tiredly. She knows he saw the blood on her hands. She knows he knows it’s not hers. “You alright?”

For some reason, Darcy felt a lump in her throat. The casualness of this entire fight made her almost forget that this was her first kill in years. 

“Thank you, Sam,” she says, sincerely. Darcy doesn’t have it in her to lie, not to him. Maybe to anyone else, but Sam has a tendency to really get under during situations like these. “I will be.”

It’s truthful. It’s honest. That’s just one of her many rules that she broke today.

Sam leaves after giving her a pat on the shoulder. In all of this, Darcy keeps an eye on one thing: Natasha’s scan of the entire room with an unreadable face. 

Later that day, Jane and Darcy have subway for dinner in her lab. Jane recounts how she was perfectly safe, and didn’t even know what was going on until Hulk next door started knocking. Knocking, as in tearing down the walls in rampage. Thor comes saving and the rest are history. Darcy is in the middle of taking a bite when Jane slips out that the Avengers will be finding out who the hell the attackers were, and they would possibly be gone for a few weeks to investigate.

To Darcy, that was more than enough time.

She lets Jane stay in her lab because she needs Someone to know that she’s going to be leaving. Darcy complains that Culver has messed up her graduation process so she absolutely needs to go down to West Virginia to make sure she graduates on time. Darcy also makes sure to bitch about it a lot, to the point Jane pushes her out of the doors. 

“Don’t forget your taser!” Jane calls out right before the door closes. Of course Darcy will never forget, not ever now that the risk of being attacked is still high. 

By 8pm, Darcy is on a plane to Bosnia. She slips right through airport security with her taser handy. She also brings along at least a dozen knives, strapped all over her body, with a handgun to accompany. Over a course of a day, she grew attached to them.

If a taser is Darcy Lewis’ choice of weapon, every other weapon on Earth is Darya Yakovena Romanova’s. 

It’s in her blood to be a weapon. 

-

_The winter in Canada will always be the best memory in her heart. The warmth of the fire counterbalanced the harshness of the cold, but even that wasn’t even too bad. She woke up every morning under dozens of blankets, with the smell of bacon and hot chocolate ready for her. Even her papa felt at ease in their cabin in the woods, far from society and everything that was hunting them down._

_It was one of the best moments of her life._

_It was also the first time she saw the light in someone’s eyes fade into nothingness by her own hand, with her papa teaching her exactly how to do it._

_But even that couldn’t dim those memories, no matter how downhill everything became afterwards. First it was to kill. Then it was to dispose. Darya realized that everytime she stopped a person from breathing, she too was stopping her own light in her eyes, one life at a time._

_The snowflakes of that winter were the grandest in size. Even her papa had to be amazed. His dull eyes seemed to grow brighter every time he watched Darya look at them._

 

-

She makes a stop in Florida before she heads to Culver, thus prolonging the retrieval of her long awaited bachelor’s degree in political science. It’s been ready for almost a year now, and if it weren’t for Darcy’s fluctuating mailing address, she would have gotten it by then. 

Darcy is in Florida because she thinks she deserves a vacation. A short, but restful vacation on the beaches of Miami. Maybe she deserves it, maybe she doesn’t. In reality, she just needs time to think because she potentially has the coordinates of where her papa is, or where he could be heading, and that makes her head spin. It keeps her awake. It makes her more tired. Her chest is aching for peace, and of course she knows that it could be solved in a week’s time if she continues hopping locations.

From Finland to Egypt, and Spain to Kazakhstan, every single safe house that she knows from there and between has been used. Recently. She has found half done laundry and empty weapons and _blood_. Too much blood for her liking. It clicks on her third trip when she‘s at Montenegro that all the safe houses that were used coincides with the destruction of known locations of active HYDRA compounds, and even places Darcy or SHIELD didn’t know were HYDRA.

Her papa has a list. If Darcy is correct, his next target is in Cuba. A mere 330 miles from her. It makes Darcy’s legs shake.

She settles in a nice hotel that’s a walking distance away from a beach. She doesn’t know how long she’ll stay, but she already contacted her resources in Cuba to stay alert. Darcy walks to the beach and brings a book about sociology for light reading now that she’s most likely officially graduating. Usually, she changes her cover before she can ever get her master’s. She doesn’t think she’ll pursue more into political science, but she doesn’t think she’ll let go of Darcy Lewis. Not yet.

Her phone buzzes and she’s sure its from Jane pestering her about Culver. These past few days, she’s been begging Darcy to bring home some samples and scientific papers when she gets back and Darcy still hasn’t told her that she was on a manhunt in Europe so she replies by sending funny cat videos instead. That, however, never stopped Jane.

It’s getting dark, but there’s torches and fairy lights scattered around the trees that it makes the place look somewhat magical. She snaps a few photos, and she’s maybe thinking about telling Jane after all that she wasn’t at Culver at the moment. There’s not a lot of people at the beach, and if there was, they were getting ready to leave. In a few moments, Darcy too would also pack up and throw away her self indulgent cans of beer, but only when she finishes her chapter on industrial sociology. It’s starting to get interesting, and her brain has been warming up. 

She almost doesn’t hear the crunch of a beer can. If she didn’t, she would have probably blown up with the grenade thrown at her. 

“God damn it,” she hisses to herself as she rolls to safety a mere second after her chair explodes. She took her bag and phone with her, and it seemed to be screeching now with notifications.

It’s a collection of texts ranging from Jane to all the various Avengers. In her split second of focus to her phone, it has one clear message and it wasn’t for Jane’s scientific needs: it was to tell her that her life was in danger, and that whoever attacked the tower was for Darcy Lewis.

Darcy clenches her jaw tighter. Everyone who was at the beach now escaped and fortunately, there seems to be no innocent casualties. She slips her phone in her bag and exchanges it for her guns. She became a small walking weapons storage and her paranoia worked out for her in the end.

She just wished she wasn’t on the sand. It makes everything so much harder and there’s sand in places where there should never be sand.

Her fist makes contact with a chin when her earbuds start to buzz, stopping the Florence + the Machine songs from playing. That makes her mood sour even more, because she never thought that listening to Florence would improve her battle skills, and yet here she was. 

It was Tony that started talking instead. Oh yeah, she was definitely in a bad mood now.

“Lewis,” his voice feigned calmness but beneath it was actually something that sounded like panic. “Tell me you’re walking across the stage for your graduation which is why you haven’t been picking up your phone.”

“Of course,” Darcy said as she shot a person in between his eyes without blinking. She can visualize Tony’s brain working in gears because she knows he heard the shot. “Darcy lewis, _cum laude_. I’m the best student any university would ever want. Any reason you’re calling?”

She’s fighting three people at the same time and she’s doing well until someone unexpectedly brings out a dagger and slices her thigh.

“Jesus Christ, what is your problem?!” she says through clenched teeth as she head butts him. The pain doesn’t stop her, but it’s deep enough to slightly worry her. “Stark, I’ll get back to you. And whatever you do,” Darcy defeats all three soldiers and reloads her gun. She looks up at the sky, looking at it as if she was looking directly at Tony. “Do not let anyone follow me. I promise I’ll explain everything. I have everything under control.”

 

The fear of someone finding out her most well kept secret, and the fear of a certain someone barging into the story before anyone is ready, has kept her awake on some nights. She played with fire too dangerous in this life.

“Darcy-“ This time it was Thor’s voice. He sounded bewildered. 

“Sorry for tazing you,” she chirps as she watches more attackers coming. It’s obvious that she’s surrounded and there’s no way out unless she escapes quickly. Darcy smiles genuinely as she says, “Tell Jane I’ll get her her scientific papers no matter what. Talk to y’all later!”

She crushes the phone with her foot. There won’t be anyone tracking her anymore. 

She gets into a fighting stance. Thirty vs one. Heavily armed vs half loaded. Skilled soldiers vs a very angry college kid who wanted a vacation.

Darcy is worth thirty soldiers. She can take them down.

Her sociology textbook slips out of her bag when she’s on four out of thirty. It makes one of them trip and she almost laughs. He coughs up blood on her cover and for that she stomps on his fingers, a sickening crunch of pain.

This fight has been going on for a short while but she can already feel exhaustion piling up on her shoulders. Days of lack of sleep and mental stress is making her slower, but she’s still deadly. She’s not in her top shape and she gets a punch on her eye because of it. She’s about to get decked again until her attacker suddenly gets pulled back with a strong hand, and gets punched instead.

With a metal arm.

“Why didn’t you answer your phone?” her rescuer asks, not demands, pointing his gun right next to her head to shoot the person behind her. In most scenarios, her survival instinct would go absolutely haywire and do anything to escape the deadly end of a gun, but when he points it at her, Darcy doesn’t even move. Not a budge. The precision of his aim is so terrifying similar to hers that her breath catches in her throat and this is such a bad time to lose focus and-

“папочка,” _Papa._

She can’t see because tears brim her eyes. Darcy cannot move to save her life and so her papa does that for her. The side of his mouth quivers just slightly as he grabs her close into his arms as they duck from a bullet. She can smell the vanilla and leather and she knows that it’s him. It’s _him._

“милая,” _Sweetie_.

His voice is as deep and gruff as she remembers from years ago. Memories ago. But it’s still soft. Her heart twists that his voice is still soft despite everything. She can’t even imagine everything he’s been through because if she does, she wouldn’t be able to handle it. There‘s a mighty amount of things that Darcy is capable of, but imagining the most important person of her life going through beyond hell, is enough to make her want to lose everything.

 

“ _I need you to focus right now_ ,” his voice instantly pulls her out of her blank shock, speaking in Russian. He doesn’t sound harsh. He sounds kind, generous. He wants to save the both of them, and that’s the only thing he ever wanted for as long as she’s known. “ _Let’s get out of here together_.” It’s a promise.

Darcy takes those words and burns it into her heart. She’s with him now. She’s anchored. She’s older and more skilled and she’s with him now. Darcy won’t let a small scrimmage like this separate them. Never again.

“ _Of course, Papa_ ,” Darcy replies as she pushes him back to narrowly miss another bullet. She takes one look at him, scrutinizing every detail like his overgrown hair, heavy eyes, and everything about him that makes him him before she jumps back into action.

Her strength is unmatched now. It was like she was blessed by Ares. Her movements were as delicate as a ballerina, but her skills were as deadly as a nuclear weapon. She cuts and she shoots, using all the tricks from her childhood. It was like a vault in her brain opened and everything she seemed to forget from ages ago were returning as if it never left. 

No one is a match for the Winter Soldier and his daughter. 

The sand is covered in blood, so much that it even reaches the waters. Her papa finishes off the last one and before she could hug him again, just to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating, they’re off and running. He doesn’t leave her side, however. They run side by side, far from the time when he used to carry her in his arms with hoods and disguises.

“Do you remember our Florida safehouse?” he asks her as they turn a corner. The rest of Darcy’s weapons are in the hotel room, and she curses herself at that rookie mistake. She’s been out of the game for too long.

But before she could reply, he suddenly halts. Her breath hitches because she thinks it might be another enemy, another chance to get ripped away from him, but he stops to take her in his arms. His heart is hammering and she can feel how fast its beating, and she knows there must be a million feelings coursing through his veins. In her ear, he’s whispering ‘thank you for being safe’ in dozens of languages that she’s losing count. She understands every one of them.

In a second too soon, they’re out on the run again. 

“Yes, it’s about fifteen minutes away from here,” she replies, regaining her composure as they cut through a popular open air mall, even more dense during the night. She sheds her ruined clothes and picks up a loose sweater. Her father ties his hair and wears sunglasses. In the crowd, she slips an arm around his. She doesn’t care if she seems immature, but when she said she never wants to be separated from him ever again, she meant it word for word.

“I missed you,” Darcy says, trying not to feel her eyes burn as they casually walk across the mall. To anyone, they just look like casual tourists at a busy tourist spot. Hiding in plain sight. 

Her father brings her closer, as much as he can while walking at a reasonable pace.

“I knew someone was following me,” he said. “I didn’t know who it was, but that meant I needed to move faster. Destroy faster.” There’s nothing to say more about that. They both know who their enemy is. It’s only fitting that the weapon HYDRA built to destroy the world was now the man out to destroy HYDRA itself. “I knew it was you in Cuba, though. I’m sorry if you were a good friend to your source. I think I broke his leg. And I stole his phone.”

Darcy snorted. “It’s fine. He needed a beating, anyway. I called him, asking for a favor and he tried getting a million out of me. As if I didn’t save his butt back in ‘89.”

They made it to the safehouse in time, because Darcy’s thigh was really bleeding now and she’s getting dizzy. The dust of the house wasn’t really helping too. This house has been vacant for almost 30 years, only being visited once when Darcy was maddeningly drunk while at a sorority party miles away.

He immediately set to work on it. The gash was deep and ugly, and if Darcy didn’t have God blessed inhuman genes, it would have made a horrid scar. Maybe she would have even died. He grimaced at the sight of it.

“I think the knife was poisoned,” Darcy says, already feeling the symptoms of something wrong. This was her only wound and she felt beyond sick. If she wasn’t already sitting down, she would have fainted. 

“I think it was too,” he says quietly to himself, working efficiently with supplies he has on hand. She’s suddenly grateful that he’s here, because she probably wouldn’t have lasted long if she defeated all thirty by herself. “It’s okay, sweetie, this is treatable. Just close your eyes. This is going to hurt a lot.”

She knows it will because her papa doesn’t lie. Instead, she shuts her eyes as her papa pours a century old bottle of whiskey to clean her wound.

Darcy doesn’t even open her mouth to scream.

-

_She’s eleven when she has to take a bullet out of her father’s shoulder. He doesn’t even see it, until she mentions it after seeing blood come out of his shoulder as he’s carrying her._

_“Papa,” she says, in Dutch because he asked her to practice her Dutch. “Your shoulder is bleeding.”_

_He doesn’t say anything until they reach their safehouse. He makes sure from head to toe that she has no scrape, that she has no injury whatsoever. He finally exhales after finding nothing, and when he opens his eyes, he looks like her papa. There’s no other hardness or seriousness etched on his face, only kindness. and definitely some exhaustion._

_“Thank you for telling me,_ sweetie,” _he smiles, not a single emotion of pain. No matter what language they’re talking in, he always calls her ‘милая’. It’s something permanent in their ever changing lives. “How about you go to sleep now? I’ll fix myself up and head to bed myself.”_

_She’s ready to walk away, and sleep, just like her papa asked her to. But she bites her lip, and pushes her glasses up on her nose. It’s her fourth pair this year, and it was brand new and_ bought, _not stolen. It was for her birthday present._

_“Papa, maybe I can help you take it out,” she offers quietly. She’s met with silence, and his eyes get heavier. It’s not the same as his eyes when they’re on the run, but it is more solemn, more tragic somehow._

_“I’d appreciate that,” he finally says. His voice is resigned, but not disappointed. Sad._

_It wasn’t the first time she saw so much blood, but it was the first time she saw him so sad. However, it was the first time he slept before her, only because he thought she was already sleeping._

_She kept thinking about how he didn’t open his mouth to scream. Not even once._

-

After she wakes up from an apparent 15 hour mini coma, he’s still there. In a split second from when she opened her eyes, Darcy has decided that everything that happened this past week was an acid dream or some chemical spill that happened while she visited Bruce’s lab or something because none of this should be happening.

But her papa is reading her book on sociology in a chair next to her, looking interested and calm. The blood soaked pages doesn’t make him budge.

“Papa?” her voice croaks out, and her throat is so dry, it hurts. Again, her eyes burn to cry. This time they’re not in the danger of death or any stabbing, so she lets them out freely.

Her father lifts his head ever so carefully, and he’s sitting underneath the sunlight. He looks millions of years younger, like a young man straight out of the war after V-day. That should have been him. In all possible universes that Bucky Barnes could have lived in, he should have been in the one where he was happy and safe.

“Papa,” she can’t keep her tears from stopping now. He gets up from his seat and she basically crawls into his arms. She shakes and shakes and she doesn’t care because his hug is so stable and safe. There’s nothing different about this from years ago when she was nine and they were off around in eastern Europe somewhere, cold and starving, but together.

“You’ve been so brave by yourself, _милая_ ,” he says, as croaky as hers. It sounds like he hasn’t spoken either. He strokes his hair and that makes her cry harder because his touch is so soft, as if she was fragile and could break in a moment’s notice. “I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you after-“

“Don’t apologize,” she says, emphasizing the words carefully. She speaks it into his chest. “Don’t ever apologize because it wasn’t your fault. None of this was your fault, Papa.”

There’s silence. She feels better after sniffling a bit more, and she pulls back slightly too look at him. His eyes were red and puffy, and it’s the first time she’s seen him cry this close.

“I missed you a lot, kiddo,” The endearment twists her heart. It never made sense during her childhood whenever he let that slip out when he talked to her. It was so American. Of course now it makes sense, but there were so many red lights that she should have recognized but she didn’t. Darcy wonders if there’s anything else her papa is still struggling alone with. Anything, just to help shoulder some of the weight he was forced to take.

“I reek,” she says in disdain and she pushes him away, but keeping him in arm’s length. Her hair is greasy and she knows she smells _awful_. Of course there’s also the sand. 

Her papa scrunches his nose, jokingly. Or maybe not.

“There’s hot water,” he adds helpfully. She smiles at him, and with a kiss on the forehead, he leaves the room to go to the living room, leaving her to her privacy.

Instead of going straight to the bathroom, she falls back on the bed instead. She does some breathing exercises, some pinches to her cheek, some actual slaps to try and wake her up, but in every scenario, her body and mind is here. She’s here.

It terrifies her.

Darcy still gets up. Her nasty gash has reduced to a thin, angry red line, and her papa did a wonderful job tending to it. She takes a shower carefully, scrubbing every inch, and letting everything slip down the drain. Obviously the clothes from when she was thirteen doesn’t fit her anymore, so she puts on her papa’s sweatpants and shirt. She expected it to smell like mothballs and dust, but it smells like fresh laundry, and his particular scent of vanilla and leather.

She limps to the living room, where breakfast is waiting. Darcy picks up a newspaper from the 1970s and patiently reads while her papa is finishing up the eggs and bacon. He sits as soon as she drinks her coffee. She nearly spits it out on the newspaper because of the absolute shit ton of sugar and milk in it.

“Sorry,” he rubs a hand on the back of his neck, pink in the face. He is smiling and that’s all that matters in her opinion. “Don’t really know what type of cup you’d like.”

Personally, she liked it with almond milk and a hint of sweetness, but she’s sure she doesn’t have the luxury of almond milk in this place. To respond to his question, she keeps on drinking. He stops looking embarrassed soon after that.

“Thank you for the breakfast, Papa,” she says as soon as she digs in. He watches as she takes her first bite. The eggs are slightly overdone and the bacon is nearly too burnt to eat. After all these years and mind wipes, he still remembers that this is her favorite breakfast in the world. It makes her want to cry all over again. Once he sees she’s satisfied, he eats. He’s careful, and eats every bite slowly, but enjoyably. Their silence is comfortable. Maybe they should be talking, about the lost years, or about their next move, but eating together... It’s the last thing she would have ever thought she would be doing again.

She takes the dishes when they’re done. He tries to stop her, looking down to her wound, but she rolls her eyes and still takes the dishes to wash. 

“Alright, kiddo,” he leans against the counter as she washes. The more he talks, the more of his accent comes back. Not his flawless Russian or even standard American; it was the drawled Brooklyn she heard in gaps of when he let it slip out sometimes. Now, she doesn’t know if it’s intentional or not, but it’s here, and she loves it. “What’s your move?”

She continues washing the dishes. “I’ll stay with you.“

It’s a simple plan. Now that her cover is probably blown to millions of pieces, and the Avengers are probably scrambling to figure out her true identity, It’s a good plan to stick with him until everything smooths out. They should also probably need to find out who’s out to kill her. 

Maybe then she’ll head to Culver and grab those scientific papers. Maybe even her diploma.

“Okay,” her papa says, breathing carefully while picking up the newspaper she put down. It sounds like he’s giving permission for her to head out to the movies with her friends. She knows in an alternate universe, that should have been the situation. 

This should be hard. As she washes the dishes and he reads the newspaper, she thinks it really isn’t.

-

_Darlene o’Bearin, born in 1974. Brooklyn College, class of 1999. Linguistics._

_Jamie Winnifred, born in 1979. University of Los Angeles, class of 2004. Program Analyst._

_Becca George, born in 1984. Indiana University-Purdue University of Indianapolis, class of 2009. Physical therapy._

_Darcy Lewis, born in 1989. Culver University. Political Science._

-

They head back to Bosnia after five days in the Florida safehouse. He was adamant about not leaving until she was completely healed, but she was buzzing and ready to go.

They compromised when her wound was barely noticeable, like a light scratch. Times like these she was thankful of her genes. Of course not aging a day over 25 has its perks too. It gave leeway to many opportunities, such as reserving seats for first class at any given moment. She worked as a program analyst in California a few years ago, and she hit a gold mine with it. She wasn’t too bad with technology, and although she wouldn’t say it to his face, she can point out a few flaws in Stark tech. Darcy is an amateur compared to Tony, but she decided if she came out of this alive, maybe she can suggest some improvements and hopefully she won’t get kicked out of the tower for too long.

“Is my daughter a millionaire or what?” her papa whispers as he’s seated and immediately offered champagne and lobster. He speaks in french to not raise any alarms. 

“I fiddled with a few occupations,” she replies smoothly, smiling widely as she accepts the glass and plate. “I moved around before anyone could pinpoint that I was like, basically, ageless. Five years max and then I usually enrolled to another university.” 

From journalism to physical therapy, she worked in any field she was interested in. Some of them didn’t roll in any dough, but it gave her good funds and something to do while staying a young adult for decades. Although, the partying did get somewhat tiring.

“How long have you been Darcy Lewis?” his voice is weird when he says her chosen name. Of course it’d be when Darya Yakovena Romanova rolls off the tongue better in his opinion. 

She hums. “Seventh. Way past my max and the Avengers are most likely- no, is absolutely after my tail now that I’m getting attacked.” 

He sits quietly in his seat now. Their time in Florida was not enough time to unroll decades of years separated, but it was enough to get a basic summary. He knows that Steve wants to find him. He knows that Steve _is_ trying to find him. It makes him sweat and nervous and skittish because Steve won’t find Bucky. He’ll find a man with a mind that’s broken to millions of pieces, someone that once made up Bucky Barnes. 

Darcy instantly recognizes the shift in the mood. She puts down the drink, and holds his hand. His left hand. He doesn’t look at her in the eye, but he tightens his hold and she keeps her hand there. 

“You don’t owe anyone anything,” she says carefully. He isn’t looking at her but she knows she has every drop of attention he has. “I’m an adult now. I can take care of myself. You don’t have to be who someone wants you to be.”

He closes his eyes. 

“You really did grow up, милая,” he smiles, a bit strained. Despite everything, he sounds relieved. 

“Of course!” she laughs. “Do you know how many pep talks I gave to crying and drunk girls in bathrooms? I’m kind of proud of it.”

What she doesn’t say is how many times she had to tell herself that, sobbing in bed because she hasn’t been herself in years. She cried because she had to be reborn, as if she was a snake into new skin. She cried because she had to cross the street to avoid best friends from past identities who meant the world to her, who aged and got married and had children, while she remained young and goofy. She attended funerals in disguises while she watched her past classmates and friends look at each other and reminisce.

Every identity she held, she left a part of herself with it. Darlene o’Bearin was youth; she was carefree and loud, with a tongue that was piping hot with courage and cleverness. Jamie Winnifred was more quiet, seeking refuge in classes and numbers and everything average human brains couldn’t. Becca George was ideal; pretty, smart, and kind. There wasn’t a head she didn’t turn when she walked pass, and there wasn’t an exam she ever got below 90 on. 

Darcy Lewis was comedic relief. She tazed the god of thunder twice and posted him on to her Facebook. 

She also took down a room of attackers from trying to kill her, with kitchen knives and whatever she can get her hands on. She lived with the Avengers and was basically friends with them. She even found and tracked the Winter Soldier, someone who was alive like a burning sun but wanted to be as silent as a grave. 

Darcy was as close as Darya ever got to live.

Her past and her present are colliding, and her future is slowly looming in. Darcy or Darya. Her life now or on the run with her papa. She’s an adult now, but too often than not, she feels like the helpless teenager that got stranded when her papa got ripped away from her. She learned from dirt and blood to survive on her own, to salvage her own path.

Her papa says her name and she immediately snaps to attention. He’s looking at her with an unreadable expression. She’s seen that look before.

“Yes?”

“I called you a few times but you didn’t answer. Are you okay?”

“Of course,” she lies, smiling. She yawns to escape the conversation and she knows he’s too smart. He knows that this is a diversion so they won’t talk any further. She plays with her necklace, an indication that she doesn’t feel okay. His face breaks when he sees her doing that.

“Alright,” he says, not pressing on the issue. “Take a good rest, Darcy. We’ll be on the move soon.”

“You too, Papa,” she kisses his cheek. She wasn’t even tired, but for the sake of keeping the fragile peace, she closes her eyes.

She didn’t see the frown on his face when he realizes she doesn’t react to ‘Darya’ anymore, but to ‘Darcy’. 

 

-

_Her mama was a ballerina. She had sharp eyes and a sharper smile. She liked her eggs and bacon overdone. She always stretched when waking up and before going to bed. She liked it when others had a good music taste. She really, really, didn’t like it when people touched her pointe shoes. She loved Darya and her papa immensely, more than anything in the world can ever offer._

_All of these facts are the only things Darya knows. Not remembers, but knows._

_There’s also the ring her papa wears around his neck. It’s a plain silver ring, too small to be his but too big for it to ever be hers. Without saying anything, she knows it’s her mama’s._

_If she closes her eyes, sometimes she can hear her voice. Soft but croaky, the same tone her papa always talks to her in. Lullabies and gentle words to lure her to sleep, and loving hymns for her to be a better person when she wakes up._

_They rarely talk about her, but she knows he’s struggling as much as she is. Her papa is a strong man. The only time she ever saw a crack in his focus is whenever she was injured or whenever he saw a woman with red hair._

-

In Bosnia, they are typical American tourists. They wear socks with sandals and layers of sunscreen. They’re siblings, so they bicker a lot to the amusement of the locals. They get extra free food when they speak fluent Bosnian, which makes them truly well loved. 

“Those crazy Americans,” an old lady muses after they left. “I do hope they come back.”

Darcy Lewis and Bucky Barnes cruises through the capital city of Sarajevo, skillfully avoiding the suspicious eyes of poorly blended in soldiers, who keeps careful surveillance of the area. The duo does it at an ease, while charming everyone who comes across them.

Bucky laughs big at an audience while Darcy slips out of the scene. She walks until she finds one of the poorly disguised soldiers, which didn’t take that long to find. He’s standing near a trash can, and her eyes twinkle because the situation makes it so easy for her to pickpocket anything she wants.

She buys a snack and leisurely eats it, scrolling down her phone to make it seem completely natural. She trashed her personal phone, but she completely hijacked this one to make it almost untraceable. No social media, no wifi, no anything that can connect her to the outside world. For the past few days, it's just been her and the pictures she’s taken. Of course her papa is in most of it, and the beautiful scenery of Bosnia.

A few minutes later, she goes to the trash to throw away her finished snack. A second later, she walks away with his wallet and his comm. She takes a few detours just in case anyone might be following, and sure enough, she has two trails. Her instinct kicks in, and she scans the area. She wants to be in an area with little to no outsiders, because one thing she absolutely dreads is when collateral damage are involved. More often than not, it usually is.

She enters an opening, fortunately empty of locals, and she sits down on the bench. No one arrives in the minutes to pass. Her heart starts to beat faster.

When Darcy originally came here, Bosnia was empty. Nothing suspicious, and definitely no soldiers roaming the area. She jumped country to country, hopefully catching something, but the only thing she caught were the safehouses being used, which eventually brought her to her papa.

She stops thinking there.

Her mind blanks.

It empties.

The bone crushing dread starts to fill her chest, and a heavy burst of anxiety starts to fill as she begins to think more and more. She doesn’t move. That would cause more disruption. 

She walked right into a trap. Casually and confidently, she doomed herself and her papa.

It all makes sense. The attack at the tower to distract the Avengers. To lure Darcy to Europe. To reconcile and bring her and the Winter Soldier back together, right into the lair. Head first, no defenses. 

Darcy gets up from the bench and _prays_ that he figured it out as well. The clear weather and laughter in the air doesn’t mingle with the dangerous atmosphere she’s in. She holds her breath the entire time she walks back to her papa, and she keeps it, even when her eyes find where he is. He’s now sitting with some of the senior citizens, bonding easily.

Like a sitting duck.

His eyes meet her eyes, and it’s the clearest she’s ever seen it. He is so joyful, after talking to people from _his_ era, and spending time with one of the most important people in his life. His clear blue eyes meet her scared green eyes and he can only frown at her distress until he’s a second too late.

Bombs explode at the buildings around them, the dark clouds polluting the air as soon as it hits. In a flash, there are hands pulling him down, and she can only watch as he is helplessly overtaken by dozens of soldiers in solid gear for protection. The Winter Soldier is a mighty warrior, but the element of surprise and numbers were against him.

Darcy is ready to spring into action, but hands take her as well. Her mind is on fire to grab and break free, but the grip is too strong for her. She’s basically racing backwards as arms tighten around her upper body, restricting her from moving.

“I need you to survive,” her attacker whispers to her ear. Darcy jerks back again, and the grip becomes tighter. “Darya, you need to understand: we _need_ you to survive.”

The name almost makes her lose control of her body and her thoughts. She almost becomes limp in the moment her papa needs her the most, but she doesn’t. She wills her vision to focus as she commands herself to use all of her strength, all of her power to get free.

The grip comes off and she grabs whoever attacked her in blind fury and flips her assailant, with the intent to break every bone in their arm.

She’s met with a groan, and a few seconds of them aching on the ground. Darcy is ready to flee, and from the corner of her eye, she sees her papa fighting, still fighting, despite being outnumbered.

“Darya,” her attacker says breathlessly, the iron grip finding darcy’s wrist. It’s unbreakable. “Listen to me.”

The touch was soft. Warm. Darcy is still furious at whoever would use her birth name, a name that was sacred to those who _knew_ her.

“What do you want from me?” Darcy demands, teeth bared, as if she was ready to fight to death. She would, but her papa is struggling, and she needs to get free from this distraction, quick.

“милая,” her attacker said pleadingly. Desperate. “ _please, look at me_.”

In the deadliest glare she can summon, Darcy forced to look at the distraction. 

Natasha Romanoff looks back from the ground, eyes unguarded, looking vulnerable despite the iron grip she has on Darcy. She was not the Black Widow Darcy knew. This woman was pale, almost sickly. She had dark bags under her eyes, and she looked so exhausted and spent.

The biggest difference from the Natasha Darcy knew is in her eyes. Back then, whenever she was near her, Darcy always made sure to look. To look for the recognition. To look for 

“мама,” her voice is stuck in her throat.

She can’t think. She can’t feel anything but shock that she showed up now, and anger that it had to be in this moment, and bile that her papa is in danger and she can’t do anything, and so much more emotions she can’t describe profoundly.

There’s grief. Happiness. Rage. Glee.

Years ago, she dreamed of this moment. When she was 10 and she killed for the first time, she dreamed of her mother’s embrace and wept for forgiveness. When she was 11, she imagined it was her mother guiding her while taking the bullet out of her father’s shoulder. When she was 23 and on her own, she cursed her mother for giving birth to her in this wretched world.

Now, she just wishes she had enough time to memorize what her mama looked like. Not as Natasha Romanoff, Darcy’s workmate, but as her _mother_. She wants just that, in this moment. Darcy surely would have gotten lost in her mama’s green eyes, the same exact ones she had herself, if it weren’t for the screams and the gunshots in the background. 

“You need to promise me you’ll get out of here alive,” her mama says, words as firm as the grip she held onto Darcy. 

Darcy helplessly looks back to her papa, then to her mama. 

“I-“ her words fumble, but it comes out. She finally nods. “Please make sure he’s safe,” Darcy finally says. Her mama stands, and she’s overwhelmed with the need to envelop her mother with a hug so tight that it can rival her grasp. She wants to take her parents, far away, so it’s just the three of them. she can even picture it in her mind. Darcy stops herself before she can do it, and she starts to head the other way when the familiar hold comes back, and it's an official embrace this time.

“I thought you were gone,” her mama says brokenly into her hair. There’s a lot more in that single sentence than all the conversations from the time Natasha has ever spoken to Darcy. She gives a kiss to her forehead. “Stay alive.” 

“You too.”

The words are a ghost on her lips because she is gone before Darcy can say anything back. However, she holds on to a small item her mama slipped into her hand before she left. It was warm with how hard it was held on to. The gunfire from her signature glock in the distance is a comforting sound, and Darcy needs a way out of the city, fast. It doesn’t take her long to find it because she got dragged to the path of where her car was parked. 

In the small gap of danger and safety, she looked down to the item. It were dog tags on a necklace, belonging to James B. Barnes. Hanging on to it as well, was a plain silver ring, too big to ever be hers, and much too big to ever be her mama’s. She doesn’t know what she feels now that she has the other half of the rings. Helplessness or happiness. Both given the moment they get torn away from her.

She’ll never forget the look of her papa’s eyes when he told her to run away as he got shot down years ago when they got separated. It’s the same look that her mama gave her just moments ago.

There wasn’t enough time before fire surrounded the city, and so through the flames, Darcy drove off with a mad fury. She put on the necklaces and it clunk with one another. Surprisingly, it was a comforting sound.

Now she knows why her papa broke his concentration whenever he thought about her mama. Her hair was the same exact color as fire, only hotter and more dangerous.

-

_She remembers it being a nice day. Which says a lot, because that place was Hell._

_She doesn’t remember much, and maybe it’s because her childhood was too traumatic and that was her way with coping with things. All she remembers is being with at least a dozen other girls her age, who looked at her with despise and loathing. They cut her hair and bullied her and didn’t care for her. There was no caring for in the red room, but the malice the girls had for her was different. It was a deeper set of hatred in their eyes, and Darya didn’t know why._

_On the fourth day of nine months of her third year in training, a bulky man came instead of their usual trainers. His stare was piercing yet neutral, and although no one would admit it, everyone avoided his eyes. He was so wide that he easily blocked the little sunlight that came through the small window. Instead, his metal arm reflected the light._

_They called him the Winter Soldier. The finest weapon of the motherland._

_A long time ago, Darya called him Papa. He smiled when she was younger. The man she’s looking at isn’t capable of doing that._

_He trained the girls for a hard five months. It was a miracle because instead of the rainy weather spring brings, it was sunny and warm. Every single day. She tried not to let it distract her, especially when she watched him break little girl’s arms with an easy snap. She herself wasn’t shielded if there was any paternal love left; she went to sleep with numerous bruises and injuries during their training._

_Her worst injury came on her birthday. They weren’t supposed to know their date of birth, but Darya wasn’t a normal child. During their lab sessions, she would often sneak a peek at her data and if she got caught, she would pay the price of it with a slap in the face, or maybe an extra dosage of the electricity from the wires connected to her brain. She was born on October 22, 1962 on a country named Cuba. The name of her mother was redacted, but there was a great amount of information about her health data. Her father’s name was also redacted, but she remembers enough to know who it is. She wishes it were the same for her mama. She doesn’t even remember her face._

_She was nine when four of her ribs fracture and her eyes got damaged. She was blinded for half the fight, but she still won against the girl who slept on the bed next to her with bloody determination and dirty grit. She wasn’t whisked away to the medical wing as she expected, so she had to make do with the bandages she saved from previous injuries._

_In the middle of the night, the Winter Soldier woke her up and they left. She was barefoot and she didn’t bring anything except for the clothes on her back. No one followed them._

_The next day, he treated her injuries with proper medicine. It wasn’t until a few days later that she could see, and she read the sign of Ireland and her blood ran cold. The Winter Soldier didn’t speak for a month, and it was only when he killed her previous trainer when they ran across them at Dublin._

_“This is treachery,” she says simply as he takes the ammo of the dead man laying at their feet. “We will be killed.”_

_“I know,” he replies. They hear movement near them, and without a doubt, it is Red Room._

_For the first time, he looks at her in the eyes. She is still sensitive, and cannot focus, but he lowers himself down to his knees to become eye level with him. Blue meets green. Soldier meets trainee._

_Without saying anything, he asks for permission. More than anything, he’s asking for her trust. Father meets daughter._

_This can all be a game. The ultimate game of life and death to test her alliance and loyalty to the motherland. One false move and she can end up on the ground with her former trainer. At the hands of her father no less._

_She stares into his eyes. Beneath the deeply set top layer of nothingness, was a plea. When the noises around them gets louder, she makes her decision. She wraps her arms around him and he gets up without another second to waste, and he’s holding her tightly as they run off to safety. She doesn’t say anything about the necklace she feels against her face as she burrows it into his warm neck. She’s never seen it before until now._

_“I’m going to protect you, милая,” he says into her ear. He hasn’t called her that since the day she got taken away from them. “I’m going to teach you everything I know. I want you to survive. To live.”_

_She never knew what to say to him back then. And so, she trusted him._

-

She snags a phone from a tourist in Italy and dials a phone number from memory. It took four rings before it finally got picked up.

“Hello?”

“ _Ciao_ , Jane,” Darcy says lamely. Her legs dangle from a cliff somewhere in a coastal town. “Come va?” _How’s it going?_

She watches the sunset while she listens to Jane lose her marbles on the other side. It takes her a whole minute before she can say something. Meanwhile, Darcy folds her ruined clothes beside her, full of black soot and tears. She would also be lying if she said she wasn’t sore from her mama’s tight hold.

In her other hand, she holds both rings. They’re spotlessly clean, without a scratch on either one of them. Darcy would know; she always had her mother’s ring with her. She scrutinized her father’s ring, and it’s been taken care of carefully these past few decades. Darcy finds it very demoralizing that her parents both gave it to her right before they were torn apart from her.

“Darcy Katherine Lewis,” Jane finally says. She winces, because she pulled out the full name. Or what she thinks is her real full name. “What in the world are you up to?”

Darcy hums. “Somewhere in Italy, watching the sunset. I should bring you to the outside world sometimes. Thor would love it, even though Asgard must be a million times better.”

She doesn’t mean to sound wistful. She supposes she’s just tired, and these past events have taken the soul out of her. Past, present, and future all coming down on her like a rain of pain. She doesn’t really know what to do anymore. Her mama told her to stay alive, but chances are, both her parents are struggling. They’re professionals, and they’ve been doing this for decades, but something in her chest says it’s different this time. 

She doesn’t know what to do. 

“Yeah, it was beautiful,” Jane says quietly. Darcy almost forgot she was on the other line. “But I think I prefer Earth’s. We’ve gone through so much to save this hunk of rock.”

“A hunk of rock,” Darcy muses dryly. “An eloquent choice of words, astrophysicist.”

It’s getting dark. The tourist’s phone bill must be skyrocketing and she only feels a little bit bad. After a peaceful moment, Jane clears her throat.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” she says quite plainly. “But I refuse to believe I don’t know who you are. Darcy or whatever... I know you. You’re my intern who thinks she’s a comedian. We saved this hunk of rock a few times. You know me better than anyone else, and although it might not be the same, I like to think I know you too.”

They must have interrogated Jane because of her. Darcy’s chest sinks even lower, and the true weight of everything is crashing down on her. Jane should be getting angry at being lied to. She should be furious, and instead of doing that, she’s saying the exact words Darcy needs to hear to feel better.

“You’re my best friend,” Jane said. “Whoever you are, and no matter what you’ve been through, it doesn’t change that.”

The sky is a brilliant purple. Like a shock of thunder down her heart, she felt the compelling need to go back home. It’s not a location, or a building. It’s her family, and it always has been. 

“In five hours you better get out of your lab so you can see the best sunset of your life,” Darcy replies. She doesn’t say, but it’s a thank you to Jane for everything. “Maybe some fresh air too while you’re at it.”

“Only if you get those God forsaken papers,” Jane says, quick as a snap. It’s Darcy’s turn to laugh.

“Talk to you later,” Darcy said. It’s as casual as if saying bye over a cup of coffee.

“You better!” Jane quips. Darcy likes to think that Jane was smiling throughout the entire conversation. Darcy surely is, and once she hangs up, she holds onto the phone for a few more minutes. Her voice is still in her mind. The confidence Jane has over Darcy is overwhelming, but it lifts her spirits considerably. Enough to gather her wits and figure out a way to get her parents back. To get back home.

Darcy loops the necklaces back on her neck and crushes the phone with a rock. She throws it over the cliff, and she doesn’t head back to her mama’s car until she hears a satisfying drop. In the driver’s seat, she closes her eyes. She doesn’t mean to slumber, but maybe resting up is the best way to move forward.

She definitely needs some rest considering what she’s going to do next. The necklaces feels comfortable against her heart, laying on her sternum. She let out an exhale; a sigh, containing everything. The sweet smell of the kitchen, the sand from Florida, the dust of the safehouse, the air from the plane, the black soot from the Bosnia attack. 

After all of that, she breathes in.

-

_In the middle of one of the most deadliest crises the world has ever faced, a baby is born and wails for only a second before she sleeps soundly against the embrace of her mother._

_The mother is surrounded by dozens of doctors and scientists alike, who are fascinated beyond anything they’ve ever seen._

_The baby is an anomaly. An impossibility. A what if._

_The crowding circle around her feels like she’s drowning, and she’s truly about to give up until they all drop like flies an instant he comes inside. They don’t die, but they will be unconscious for a decent amount of time. He will be punished for that, but he can only look at them; his blood, his loves._

_“You worked so hard,” he whispers. No one is there to witness his delicacy, so he wraps his arm around her and presses his forehead to hers. “Thank you so much, Natalia. You are magnificent.”_

_Natalia has lived her life through Hell. Worse than Hell. Training half her life and living through missions that involved daily murders and torture was one thing; being pregnant and giving birth was another. She has been through every abuse that can happen to a person, and yet she cannot compare that pain to labor._

_She still smiles. Especially when he looks at their child like that, like she was everything good in the world. In their world, she was._

_“Hello,” Natalia murmurs. Her eyes water because she has never seen anything so perfect. She might be covered in blood and fluids, but her breathing is what makes her truly perfect. The small tuft of dark hair also makes Natalia’s heart tremble. “my little sweetheart.”_

_“She’s perfect, isn’t she?” he asks next to her. He can’t keep his eyes off of her. Natalia doesn’t have the energy to agree, but she leans into his chest, where she fits perfectly._

_The three of them are connected. Nothing can ever change that._

_Their small moment of peace gets disrupted when someone in the corner starts to stir. His need to pummel his skull into nothingness rises, but Natalia manages to shake her head slightly. There will be punishment for them both. They can’t risk being separated from her. Not now, when the experiment became a success._

_“We don’t have much time,” he mumbles. His anger deflated in him as fast as it rose._

_Natalia hums. She doesn’t mean to, but it sounds like a lullaby. She smiles more widely, and she feels so peaceful. She knows that isn’t the case. One wrong move and the whole planet is up in flames with nuclear bombs and they’re all in the center of it. Literally. The Soviet Union didn’t just place world threatening weapons onto Cuba; they placed the world’s deadliest family there as well. In the back of her mind, she’s somewhat grateful that the daughter of an American and a Russian wasn’t born on either lands._

_She belongs to no one._

_“Darya,” Natalia says. The name fits on her lips nicely. The name doesn’t hold any meaning except it belonged to the elderly woman who sold them their wedding rings when she and James were deep undercover. “Darya Yakovena Romanova. Is that okay, James?”_

_James kisses Natalia’s forehead as a response. He closes his eyes and feels the warmth from them both._

_“Of course, darling,” he beams. He looks at Darya, the small miracle that came out of the two nightmares. He wishes she will never be a part of their world. He wishes for her to be kind, and to be strong enough to live. To love._

_Something they never had the chance to do._

_The rings on their fingers come off before the first person wakes up, and that’s all the difference in the world. But they keep it. They keep it, and that’s what matters in the end._

-

All her fears resurface when she steps onto Russia. Her memories of her home land was more or less blurred, with pain and sadness being a vivid marker in all of them. She remembers breaking bones of girls her age, shivering in the cold outside for weeks at a time, and starving for too long a child should ever suffer.

She also somewhat remembers her younger years too. Their small cozy home with two rooms, just enough for three. She remembers her papa coming through the door looking like he been through hell, but still smiling like the sun when he saw her waiting for him. Darcy also remembers her mama with short red hair, not her face, carrying her while they make dinner, listening to music and dancing carefree. 

Now she looks at a blank patch of land on where it used to be. If she walks a few blocks down, she can see where her old bunk in the red room used to be. The entire facility has been burned to the ground, and it should be empowering, but she feels nothing. Darcy just wants to leave.

There’s nothing to scavenge and so she does leave. When she came back to Bosnia the day before, it was just full of hectic press and destroyed buildings with qualms of a terrorist attack. In some ways it’s true, but that’s not the real reason. Her parents are gone and if they were safe, they would both be able to contact her. 

However, it’s been four weeks. Radio silence.

Visiting the authentic place of her nightmares isn’t the sole reason for her being in Russia. She knows that whoever wants her is stationed here. For all she knows, her parents might be here too.

She doesn’t know the first step into tracking them, but word goes around that there’s a new gene capable of getting passed down, parent to child. The more she thinks about it, the more it makes sense. What more scientific proof than to get the family of the inhuman gene. She is the end result. She has the genes. They want her.

It might be stupid and reckless, but when she hears the word, she spreads it. Like hell fire.

She goes to every shady pub she can find and gets their finest rum and boasts about her being the best superior human being the world has to offer. She is better built, better thinking, and naturally, better looking. All from her genetically superior parents. 

Darcy makes sure to pay close attention to the people around her to confirm they’re the ones that can lead her to the base. She’s 100% certain when a few men in white lab coats come to investigate on her fourth pub; she’s going off the rails and playing with the piano with her feet when she sees them. With a hiccup, she suddenly decides to take a drunken nap. She passes out cold. Snores and drools, too. They buy it and they take her to the back of their car, her hands in handcuffs. 

Darcy is insulted. She already declared she was genetically superior; no crummy rum from a shady pub can make her flat out wasted. Two, they handcuffed her with steel and placed her in the back of a Honda civic. With only one guard. 

It’s truly pathetic. But she lets herself stay down until they enter the facility, which takes another few hours. They finally make it and that’s when Darcy makes her move. She stirs awake and is immediately greeted with a gun pressed against her temple.

“I need to pee,” Darcy says, her voice deeply coated in sleep. She even slurs her words for emphasis. “Come on, man, let me pee!”

They talk in rushed Russian, and she can understand everything they say. They’re debating on whether to let her go or not, and the tough man in the front nods to let her go. She’s roughly taken by the arm and is pushed to a bush to do her business. Darcy knows they’re listening so for the sake of the mission she actually does, but that’s not the worst thing she had to do before. The only reason she needed the privacy is to check if all her weapons are still in place throughout her body. A bush was not ideal, but she takes what she can get.

After a strict minute, she is blindfolded and forced to walk on what she thinks is a mile. Her handcuffs are still steel, pathetically. She’s sandwiched between two guards, and the long walk gives her crucial information.

“ _Do you think she’s the one?_ ” he asks casually. 

“ _I think she’s a fraud_ ,” the other replies in disgust. “ _I don’t even know why we bothered to waste so much resources into getting this girl. The parents are here. What use is the girl?_ ”

Darcy rolls her eyes under the blindfold, but she got the information she needed. They stop, in which she presumes for an elevator ride. In this moment she simply outstretches her hands and the steel snaps like a twig. She knocks her guards both unconscious with one action. Her blindfold comes off and she snags the clearance code of one of them before she finds a closet to dump them in.

This building goes underground for a few layers, and she supposes that’s where she was headed: deeper underground. The compound is similar to an old sewage except it smells 10x worse. There’s no hope for an air extraction even if the others were contacted, so one of the only possible ways to escape now was to leave before anyone notices. With her absence soon to be discovered, Darcy has to think fast. And find fast. More than anything, she’ll have to rely on her wits and instinct for this mission.

In the room next to the closet, she can hear muffled screaming. Her chest sinks, and she presses her ear against the wall. For an underground base, the walls are thin enough to hear through it. The vibrations doesn’t sound real enough, but she’s convinced that it’s a video of someone in high pain. Maybe it’s even surveillance of the entire compound.

She locks the closet and leans against the wall to find an outlet. After a painstaking search, she finally finds one and connects a small piece of Stark tech she tinkered with that’s tiny enough to go through small spaces and take highly detailed video surveillance of an area. She controls it with a small controller, and now she has eyes on the room without even entering.

In the end, Darcy is right. The room was small and compact, but with dozens of guards ready to jump at the squeal of a mouse. She would have been dead meat if she went inside.

She controls the tech to adjust so she can see all the rooms, and sure enough, she finds her mama and papa. They’re in two separate rooms, both severely beaten up to pulps. Almost unconscious but still hanging on.

Darcy feels rage flare in her chest, something she never felt so strongly before. She feels ice cold and burning hot fury race through her veins, with the intent of punishing anyone who touched or even looked at her parents wrongly. She wants to act and make everyone in the compound to suffer like they did, but she can only clench her jaw right now and watch.

Justice will come. And she will be the hand of it.

She doesn’t summon the tech once she’s finished surveilling. It’ll be the fuse to obliterate the place. She also programmed the videos they’re watching to replay the same empty hall video every ten minutes, and it’s to be her alibi when she moves through the halls without fear of being seen on the camera. Her mind is wickedly sharp now; no jokes or humorous quips to distract her. She knows where each round of soldiers go and she avoids them easily. 

Like a living shadow, she makes it to the first room. Her papa.

She flashes the clearance code and it turns green, opening quickly for her to slip in. The noise makes him raise his head, but it wasn’t fast or alert; it was resigned will. He looks up but he squints at her, barely being able to see through his damaged left eye that was so swollen it hurt to look at it.

He doesn’t say anything to her once he locked his vision on her. Nothing, even when she untied him from the bondages that imprisoned him.

“I’m here now,” she says. He doesn’t move. His eyes are blank. It’s like he doesn’t recognize her. “I will get you out of here.”

Darcy doesn’t know what they did to him, so she speaks neutrally. He might have trigger words inputted his brain, and her biggest fear is that she might activate them.

He doesn’t budge from the chair. He stays frozen, even when she tries to gently nudge him out of it. she attempts it one more time, and is right in front of his face to pick him up. He stares into her eyes.

“You look like her,” he said. His voice is flat. It’s a statement. “My милая. You look like her.”

It hurt him to say that, as if saying her nickname was causing him actual pain. But this confirms her dread: he doesn’t recognize her. She brushes the tears out of her eyes before he can even notice them.

“Do I? I bet she’s real gorgeous,” Darcy tries to smile, and he stills even more when he sees that. His eyes are boring into her face, as if he’s trying to drill a hole into it. For a moment she lets herself crack for a split second. She lets all her sadness and grief coat her face. Her exhaustion and fright take a hold of her, and her shoulders slack. In that second, she gives up.

He is still frozen, but he softens when he watches her show her true feelings. She’s scared.

“She’s perfect,” he whispers, so quietly but so confident. She only catches it because she was looking directly at him. He lowers his head again, but when Darcy tries lifting him up, he moves his body in accordance.

He is cooperating. Darcy can cry out of joy, but there’s not enough time. With one arm on her shoulder, he staggers like a zombie. But he is moving. That’s the important thing.

Two floors above is her mama’s room. Then one more floor up is the surface. If she manages to get both of them out in their current state without getting caught, Darcy will... She doesn’t know what she’ll do. Pass out for an 800 year nap maybe, but be happy throughout that entire time.

The elevator music kills the mood but it’s the only option with her father half conscious. When the doors open, Darcy is faced with a full team of heavily armed soldiers guarding her very weak and harmed mother.

She doesn’t even have enough time to curse before she pushes her papa onto the floor outside the elevator to safety. If he stayed inside and went even deeper into the compound, it would actually be the absolute end. Maybe not, but it’s a whole boat load more of energy that she does not currently have.

Her knife meets the small sliver of skin on a soldier’s neck and blood sprays just barely on her face before she moves on to the next. She pulls the trigger just centimeters away from their stomach and she moves on to the next. And to the next. And to the next. Until the team that was guarding her mother all lies on the ground in pools of blood and she feels sick but her mama is leaning against the wall, disgruntled but safe. She doesn’t speak, and it looks like she also doesn’t recognize her daughter, or her husband for a matter of fact.

Darcy refuses to let that dampen her spirits. Yeah her mind washed parents who were experimented on got forced to forget her, and their love for each other. Darcy is completely fine, thank you. (no she’s not.)

The rumbling footsteps of more soldiers wakes Darcy up from her fighting instinct, thus activating her fleeing instinct. The only way up are stairs or the elevator. Both are terrible options so she grabs a smoke grenade and throws one in the elevator and one in each hallway and the trio make their way up.

She’s holding both of them while climbing and her mother’s head is lolling up and down against her face. Her father’s leg is barely cooperating now. Sweat rolls down on Darcy’s blood soaked body.

They make it up and she opens the door to find-

No one.

She’s sure that the rest of the soldiers are on her floor, outside to block her escape, and below to find her. She doesn’t think twice than to throw one of her explosives down the stairs.

With an arm around her mama’s shoulder, she shoots with the most extreme and accurate aim she has ever had on every enemy she encounters. One shot, one death. Her other arm is wrapped around the waist of her papa, not being able to be used in defense.

Out of nowhere, her ears pick up the sound of whirring machine guns and with all her strength, she leans everyone back in safety. She curses in her mind and there’s no choice but to wait it out. There’s no shiny refrigerator to see where they’re coming from, but from hearing, she knows they’re not sloppy enough to have a gap in their reloading.

Darcy is running out of ideas, and explosives. Her parents are half conscious. They don’t even know who she is. She leans her head against the wall in frustration, and she hits it against a pipe. 

A pipe. Old sewage. 

She puts her ear against the metal, and she hears rushing water. Her mind wires to where she currently is, and she tries to envision if the pipes follow to where her attackers are. 

Darcy opens her eyes. It does.

An idea forms faster than she can to make sure that it’ll actually work. Shoot the pipe. Water spills all over them. Electrocute them with Darcy’s best friend. Escape. Restore her parents’ minds and be happily ever after.

With a deep breath, Darcy steadies her hand. Her parents are looking at her, with barely any energy left in themselves to keep on going. Weeks of scarce water and food has made them from the super soldiers they are to barely functioning humans. Not to mention the mental experiments they were forced to be subjects for. Her wrath rises again, so in one hand she holds a glock and in the other she holds her taser.

Darcy peers over the hallway and shoots without hesitating. Water bursts above the soldiers and at its highest voltage, she slides her taser to the ground to touch the water. They all fall down, twitching and screaming from the electricity.

Her lucky shot was also someone else’s lucky shot. Darcy’s body was pierced two times after tossing her taser. Her shoulder and her thigh oozes out blood and the pain is excruciating. It hurts a thousand times more than the usual bullet wound. After catching her breath, she grabs her parents by the neck with brute strength and holds them until they’re outside. The early dawn of light somewhat wakes them up from their slight daze. Before she can crumple from the pain, she makes her way to the bush she did her business in. 

She hid a detonator in it. When she presses it, a bomb that can cover miles will explode and everything (tech, people, monsters) that took her parents will be destroyed.

Darcy finds it and activates it. They have three minutes to escape. 

Her shoulder and her thigh are actually killing her. She’s been trying to compress it, but blood keeps trickling at dangerous speeds. The pain feels familiar, but not to this drastic extent. She looks down and the wounds look exactly like her knife wound from florida. Except, the skin around the entry hole of the bullets were rotting green. By then, Darcy did actually throw up. From the poison or from disgust or even fear, she doesn’t know.

She finds her parents at the exact spot she left them. The Honda civic she was abducted in is only a few feet away. Her vision is blurring and her strength is fading away. The adrenaline after tazing an army has wiped her out. 

She collapses at their feet. 

Her last thought before her world goes black is that she’s thankful all three of them are reunited, even if they don’t know the importance of it now. She’s 100% certain they’ll survive; they’ve been through countless battles to not to. They will live and they will regain their minds and then they’ll go on another mission, another battle.

She will not.

Darcy Lewis was only an astrophysicist’ intern. She was never meant to save the world, but at least she was able to save her parents.

\- 

_Clint can’t wait until Darcy comes home so he can actually see her real abilities in aiming. Maybe even see what she can do with a bow._

_Steve watches the news of Florida, Bosnia, Russia. He chews on his lip in worry._

_Sam wishes he listened to her more._

_Thor gets his hand on her Facebook account and laughs joyously at her first pictures of him, recounting memories with vivid detail._

_Tony is still waiting for her explanation every day. He makes sure the Florence + the Machine music he plays while working isn’t too loud to block the noise of a phone call or something for her to contact him in._

_Jane keeps thinking about Darcy Lewis. Her cum laude diploma is framed and adorned with a ribbon. And although Jane is ecstatic about that, she pays attention to the small note taped on top of a thick stack of papers crucial to her next big break._

_The note reads_ go find your best sunset.

_In smaller letters, it says_ i told u so :P

_It doesn’t say anything about who it’s from, but Jane knows without a doubt it’s from her best friend._

-

She wakes up in gaps. 

Her eyes open and she sees something. She closes it and the next time she opens her eyes, it’s to the beach. Then to the desert. Then to the sunset.

It’s at all these dozens of different locations until finally, she opens it to the sight of grand sized snowflakes. 

The smell of bacon and the sound of music coming from the other room floats its way to her room, thanks to the purposely ajar door. If she listens closely, she can even hear laughter of a man and a woman. 

That’s when she truly opens her eyes. And she doesn’t feel the need to close them again, not for a very, very long time.

**Author's Note:**

> mcu timeline is a MESS n i dont like it so enjoy n btw im a VERY casual mcu stan so i used my limited knowledge to try n make this as logical as possible?? pls dont attack if i dont get everything right lmao


End file.
